Santa Maria, Calif. – It was as if Michael Jackson had taken the stand himself.
Without a moment of cross-examination, the jury in Jackson’s trial on charges of child molesting got to hear him in two videotaped interviews for more than two hours Wednesday, describing his “pure” love of children and comparing himself to Mohandas Gandhi, Mother Teresa, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Diana, Princess of Wales.
Since those figures are dead, Jackson said, “there’s not a voice for the voiceless, and I’ve been doing it for many years.”
The screening took place after testimony by actor Macaulay Culkin, who said that he had shared a bed with Jackson on numerous occasions as a child but said that Jackson had never touched him inappropriately, as prosecutors have asserted.
“As far as I know, he’s never molested me,” said Culkin, 24, who first visited Jackson’s Neverland ranch when he was 9 or 10. He also said he traveled with Jackson to Bermuda, Florida and other places.
Asked by a prosecutor whether he might have been molested while he was asleep, Culkin said, “I find that unlikely; I think I’d realize if something like that was happening.”
Jackson’s on-screen appearance in the courtroom here was in the form of outtakes of two videotaped interviews he gave in 2002 and 2003 to British journalist Martin Bashir. Excerpts from the interviews were shown on television in the documentary “Living With Michael Jackson,” which the jury watched earlier in the trial.
The full, unedited tapes, two hours and 40 minutes long, had not been seen publicly until Judge Rodney Melville on Wednesday allowed the defense to show them in court. Objections by the prosecution were rejected.
In the interviews, Jackson said he had been unfairly accused of molesting boys, of being a homosexual and of threatening the life of one of his children by dangling him over a balcony. His accusers, he said, were motivated solely by jealousy.
“I am Peter Pan in my heart,” Jackson told Bashir, who lavished him with praise about his influence on music and commiserated with him on what Jackson said was a lonely childhood, without the diversions that “normal” children enjoy.
The outtakes portrayed Jackson, by and large, as a gentle, loving man, if somewhat eccentric, who happens to be innocently fond of children.
He also denied having had plastic surgery other than two procedures on his nose “to help me breathe better.”
Earlier, during Culkin’s testimony, the lead defense lawyer, Thomas A. Mesereau Jr., asked him what he thought of charges that Jackson had touched boys inappropriately.
“I think they’re absolutely ridiculous,” he replied.
A former chef at Neverland told jurors earlier in the trial that in 1991 he had seen Jackson fondle Culkin by putting his hand inside the boy’s shorts.
Jackson, 46, is on trial in Santa Barbara County Superior Court on charges of child molesting and conspiring to kidnap his accuser and the boy’s mother and siblings.